The Racism Of Class

And without doubt, the “language” question in Quebec was connected to “the racism of class”. But not as Jan Wong sees it. The racism of class is the racism practised among people of the same skin colour. Or it’s a racism practised for class advantage masking itself as a drive to liberate the oppressed. The Report on Bilingualism and Biculturalism recorded (in the 1960s) that the economic standing of people in Quebec was directly related to linguistic position. On an ascending scale from the lowest economic standing upwards Quebecers could be categorised as French speaking only, French and English speaking, and English speaking only. In addition the B and B Report revealed that the only people who were lower in economic status than unilingual francophone Quebecers were Native Indians and very recent immigrants. Not many would deny – though Jan Wong might – that the emergence of the FLQ had a direct connection to economic injustice in Quebec. People like Wong, Pope Benedict, and the original producers of cartoons about the Prophet Mohammed try to bury the reasons for resistance by oppressed peoples. And they all fall quickly upon their own right of free speech. Jan Wong claimed the right of free speech in her response to criticism about her assault on Quebecers. Pope Benedict claimed he wanted to “open up dialogue” when he insulted Islam. The Danes and their supporters published and re-published the cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed in a truly twisted claim of the right to “free speech”, “freedom of the press” and so on. For those who enjoy the humour of such situations it’s fair to observe that the Vatican is not a champion of free speech and never has been. (Pope Benedict has just been accused of “systematic coverup of child sex abuse by Catholic priests” over decades. Vancouver Sun , Oct 2 2006 A10) Denmark is presently in an unpleasantly reactionary and anti-outsider phase. And the Globe and Mail (Jan Wong’s employer) blanks out highly important information in its support of reactionary forces in Canada. The “secret” Canada/US integration conference held recently in Banff, for instance, attended by Stockwell Day and high ranking U.S. politicians, among others, has been blanked out of history by the Globe and Mail. The conference has been reported by this website and other communicators who are not Private Corporate Capitalists cornering - for profit and power - the so-called “mainstream” publication industry. No Globe and Mail, National Post, CanWest reports have appeared on the secret Banff Conference. Ah yes. Freedom of the press. Freedom of speech. It would be a happy fact if the three events in the title of this column simply spoke to the featureless stupidity of their authors. Alas, that is not so. The events are red letter days in the calendar of “The New Fascism”, an ideology which is marked by the racism of class. The US wants to control energy reserves the world over. And so it creates and supports mock-monarchies in the Middle East. It uses the anti-semitic cry to support the enduring oppression of the Palestinians. It is waist deep in the blood of innocent people in Iraq to whom it is bringing, remember, “democracy”, “liberation”. It is conducting an endless war in Afghanistan (key to oil pipeline hopes) using NATO and that lapdog of lapdogs – Canada – to slaughter the people of Afghanistan. Oh yes. That war, too, is for “democracy”, “liberation”. In Afghanistan the racism of class expresses itself in the unspoken claim that the billions of dollars spent on war there would be valueless if spent on peace and rebuilding instead because the Afghan people are so inferior they cannot rebuild their own country even if assisted. The rebuilding (?) will be done by the US and its puppet, Hamid Karzai, head of a gigantically corrupt government. It has to be racism that the Stephen Harper government and the irresponsible “mainstream” journalism of Canada repeat and repeat the falsehoods about Afghanistan. Jan Wong’s drivellings turn over a spectacularly successful Canadian evolution – the achievements of Quebec – and squeeze out of it a racist cause for the mad, mass shootings in that province. The Quebecers would be much more pleasing to the world, apparently, if unilingual francophones were still scraping the bottom of the economic barrel. When they were in that position, there were no mass shootings in Quebec. See. It’s simple. How touching that Jan Wong is really attacking the wonderful feat of class liberation that has occurred in Quebec. The Vatican, we know, has a history of backing US imperialism. When the “war” was against Godless Communism, perhaps there could be a theological argument, wonderfully twisted, when the US government overthrew governments of largely Roman Catholic countries like Chile, Nicaragua, and Panama, none of which was Communist. The first two, however, had entered a phase in which they demanded justice and equality for the exploited among the population. They had to be stopped. But now Communism has been felled. Where does a self-respecting Pope turn if he wants to support US domination now? He turns his attention to Islam because The New Fascism is using Islam as it formerly used Communism. By quoting a fourteenth or fifteenth century leader, Pope Benedict could go around the Koran to attack Muslims. For the Koran does not urge slaughter of the infidel. On the contrary. The Koran urges tolerance of the infidel unless – as is the case with the George W. Bush West – the infidel attacks and demonizes Islam. Some reactionary Roman Catholics (and that is what Pope Benedict is) believe that other faiths should be extirpated, erased, removed. And so Benedict held hands with the reactionary Danes, impugning Islam as they ridiculed it. All that is grist to the US imperial mill, and so Benedict will not lose from having made a carefully calculated speech in his German homeland. The George W. Bush USA has now achieved a new level of the racism of class – by the liberation of torturers – the racism of class brought to a brutal peak. The whole of the US people has opted for torture as an instrument of national policy. The president has received the support of both democratic assemblies, the Senate and the House of Representatives – voices of the whole US people. Informed historians might well say – with chapter and verse – that “the whole of the US people” has done this before. But we are living now, in the present, and the liberation of torture by the US is happening now. Put simply, US spokespeople have very often referred to US “exceptionalism”, which is a way of saying the US people are not like other peoples. Because of their difference – the US people as a single class – much is granted. As an expression of their superiority they often pursue special routes to attain their ends. In this case a “superior” people (the people of the USA) are faced with many others who do not accept the US Plan for the Planet. Large among the many others are Muslims sitting on oil reserves. Others – often dusky people – sometimes even native peoples, are doing the same thing in South America. And then there are even pure white people sitting on immense, endless reserves of river-powered electric energy in British Columbia. They, too, must be dealt with. “But”, you say, “why would a country that has become the only superpower turn to lawlessness and torture to achieve its ends?” The answer of course is lodged in the question. When Lord Acton made his most famous statement that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, he meant what he said. We think of corruption as graft and bribery and lying about policy and hiding useful brutalities that further the possession of wealth, territory, and political domination. But corruption goes more deeply into the human soul. The US teaches us that as absolute power is approached or as the powerful begin to believe they have absolute power a new factor enters. Brutality, engaged in for itself, becomes an expression of power. Torture proves the complete dominance of the torturer. It is not used, primarily to gain power. It is used as a heady narcotic, a route to ecstasy, a way of gaining a national high. The animal nature of “the enemy” us demonstrated by torture. Torture is not used to gain wealth, territory, or political dominance. It is used as a celebration of domination. All the experts insist that torture does not extract useful information. They assert (as Maher Arar has done) that the tortured person will say anything his torturers ask. Information gained through torture is useless, mostly the garbled nonsense fed the torture victim by the torturers. When the power that corrupts approaches absolute power, torture follows as a mark of superiority. The irony is that torture is so revolting to decent people not blinded by fanaticism they become more and more determined to overthrow the regime of the torturers. Power corrupts. Perhaps one of the first signs is the abandonment of truthfulness and responsibility in reporting – common to all three named in the title of this column. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. The condition of absolute corruption, we have learned through history, is the moment when power has rendered society lawless, is already crumbling, and is living in a blind moment of decadence the torturer believes is eternal. In that blind moment civilizations can collapse. History teaches us that, too. robin mathews [Proofreader's note: this article was edited for spelling and typos on October 11, 2006]